Lighting a White Background

[Deron Bauman]

Any tips on lighting a white background? Especially if you want to blow out the white....

[Scott Anderson]

Do you mean something like this?:
http://members.cox.net/trott10/ABIL60.htm

When I needed help lighting a white infinity wall, here's the thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=12586

The way I did it is to toss about 4 or 5 chimera'd 1000 watt sources at the wall, using a rented waveform to get it as even as possible, and all reading at a pretty consistant 90IRE. Then, I lit the talent as needed to make them look right on the monitor.

Although it looks a little less even on the computer, especially in the wide shots, the backround reads as a smooth, silky white on a television screen. By keeping the exposure nice and even, you aviod the nasty problems that can happen when you have illegal-range video. Because the video was well within a safe range, there was no clipping of colors, and it was easy to color correct and add effects to the video. Plus no funky audio problems when played as analog video, which can happen with severely clipped whites.

[Deron Bauman]

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. Thank you.

[Walter Graff]

Normally i might suggest a wavefrom monitor but if not then set your camera zebras to 100. That way you'll know when the white truly is white. Of course you may want the blown out Apple commercial type of white which you can get. Basically I say light your talent first and then see what you need to illuminate the white evenly. A monitor or your camera LCD is key to seeing if you got what you want. I say a monitor if you have one outside of the LCD as it will be more _accurate to look at. No real secrets for my end, just light it for what it is, white, and white simply needs less light to look white than does green.

And while some might tell you to, you don't and probably shouldn't push your video above 100 to get blown out shots. Remember 100 is white and above that is still white and probably gonna get you in trouble. _Easier way we do it in broadcast -filters. a Promist (varying densities) will give you a blown out look with your whites at 90 units as will many others such as FX enhancers, etc. _I've shot and produced many main title show themes along with a hundred commercials, corporate projects, and everything else in between, shot both on film and video where we have shot blown-out stuff and even in film I have used filters more than incredibly bright whites.

Although the quality is bad in the following clip, here is one I shot and directed that won an Emmy for best main title theme a while back. http://www.bluesky-web.com/Ricki.mov and here is a behind the scenes of that shoot to see what I used in the background http://www.bluesky-web.com/ricki.jpg

[Deron Bauman]

Thank you, Walter. Perfect.